


Deal with the Devil

by DarkTwin



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blackmail, Bottom Sherlock, CAMlock, Dark, Deleted Scene, Domination, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Explicit Sexual Content, Humiliation, M/M, Mindfuck, Really not nice, Rimming, Sexual Coercion, Unrequited Sherlock Holmes/John Watson - Freeform, be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 08:59:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3930823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkTwin/pseuds/DarkTwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>A Christmas present, he calls it. And what is he giving me for Christmas?</i><br/><i>He manages to startle me with his answer. “My brother.”</i><br/><i>After a long moment of silence, I decide to startle him back. “Given the choice, I'd rather have you.”</i><br/>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br/>Sherlock takes up a challenge that is none, fights a battle that he can't win, and loses more than a game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deal with the Devil

**Author's Note:**

> Blame it on that damned deleted scene that I can't get out of my head again, and that makes this a lot less AU than I'd like to think.

“Impress me, then,” he says. “Show me Appledore.”

“Everything's available for a price,” I tell him. “Are you making me an offer?”

A Christmas present, he calls it.

And what is he giving me for Christmas?

“My brother.”

He manages to startle me with his answer. Either I have been much more transparent than I'd like to be, or he's even more perspicacious than I've thought possible.

After a long moment of silence, in which his eyes never leave mine, and his smile never leaves his lips, I decide to startle him back.

“Given the choice, I'd rather have you.”

To give him credit, that goes down astonishingly well. I can see the cogs turning in his mind, processing the idea, weighing it, then starting to see it as the challenge that it is not, and liking it. But then, he’s never said no to a challenge before. So small wonder if he sees them everywhere, even where there are none. He is predictable after all, even in something as wildly unorthodox as this.

It takes us no more than a moment to make the necessary arrangements. He states his terms, and I accept them as they are. I find them reasonable enough.

* * *

Two weeks later, finally discharged into the care of his live-in physician - and isn’t he lucky that that man is free right now to look after his _best friend_ \- he deems the time ripe and the circumstances opportune, and gets in touch. A little later on the same night, he’s there in my private office. Suit, coat, scarf, even gloves - full armour. Eyes darting around the room, alert and unclouded. I delete “morphine” from his file. He’s already put that behind him, sooner than I’ve expected. Well. It really would have been too easy otherwise.

It doesn’t seem to unsettle him that I’ve chosen the place of his downfall at the hands of Mary Watson for his coming downfall at the hands of Charles Augustus Magnussen. Maybe he doesn’t see the beautiful logic of it. Then again, maybe he does, and finds it as beautiful as I do.

A corner of his mouth goes up, as if he’s been reading my thoughts. _Oh, you do see it, don't you? But you actually believe that you have a chance._ His determination is almost as great as his desperation, then. This is even better than I hoped.

I get up from my place at the desk, and he straightens up in response. For a moment, we simply stand there, face to face. Then he opens his mouth - those _lips_ \- and, in a flat voice, repeats the terms of our agreement. They’re simple: He is to be at my disposition for fifteen minutes exactly, and whoever loses his composure first loses the game. _Is this truly nothing but a game, for you?_

His only other conditions, when we arranged this, were that there would be nothing fancy, nothing elaborate, no material prop of any kind; and that there would be no documentation of the incident, in whatever form. I agreed readily with the first, but much more reluctantly with the second. I can’t say that I’m surprised that he thought of that, but it would have been nice if today could have been only the first occasion in a whole series, a starter to whet one’s apetite for more. Because he’d have been no different than all the others usually are, when I give them the choice of repeating the experience, or having the audio-visual evidence of the first occasion presented to their shocked wives, children, friends, employers, and the scandal-hungry general public. None of them has ever chosen that second option, and neither would he. But then, he _is_ an exceptionally intelligent man, to have foreseen that risk. And even if this will remain a singular occurrence, it will be memorable enough.

“The terms I make I keep,” I tell him curtly. It isn’t about trust - neither of us is so deluded as to build our agreement on such shaky ground - but I am a businessman, after all, and no businessman worth his salt would ever go back on his word and be known to violate the terms of his contracts. Yes, of course I will take him to Appledore if he wins. I will have to do it anyway for my plan to work, sooner or later, and if I can make him believe that he can buy his way in with this, all the better.

He’s timed his appearance very well. We wait for another minute or two in silence, until we hear the bell of St. Paul’s over the perpetual hum and buzz of the City, striking a quarter after nine. He exhales audibly then, on the last stroke of the bell, his face a mask, his whole body perfectly still but for the release of that one long breath.

Time to strip the armour off; first the visible one, then the invisible one.

“Turn around,” I tell him, and he does.

He’s not surprised either by my next request.

“Take off your clothes.”

He does that, too, with measured, unhurried movements, but not deliberately playing for time. I know that he must be counting down in his head, just as I am, and that will have to stop at some point, of course. But I can’t call it angling for an unfair advantage that it takes him ninety whole seconds to progress from his face being the only exposed and visible part of his skin to leaving literally nothing covered. There is nothing desperate or defiant in how he takes off one piece of his attire after another and drops it on the floor, but there is nothing teasing, seductive in it, either. _If this isn’t just a game, at least you're making a very good job of pretending that it is._

He shrugs out of his shirt - not a white one; he’s wasted no time on ridiculous symbolism - and it slides down from his shoulders, exposing the skin of his back, criss-crossed here and there with fine white lines, well-healed by now but still clearly visible proofs of just how much he _cares_. What a revelation. I've never had access to the details of just where he went and what he did when he was supposedly dead, but this quite exceeds even my wildest speculations. If I'd known this, I could easily have spared John Watson the discomfort of thinking that he was about to be burned alive, a year ago.

I resist the urge to trace that delicate web with my fingers. _So this is what you get off on, is it? On sacrificing your body and your dignity for the life and happiness of another human being?_

For a moment, I indulge in the mental image of him tied up and jerking and wincing and moaning and sobbing in equal measures of pain and delight, while someone - nameless, faceless - adorns his naked back with the indelible inscription of that truth. The satisfaction of martyrdom. How noble. This, of course, is the point I will have to get him to tonight, too. How useful that he’s got a veritable roadmap of it moulded into his back. _And now let me see how noble you'll still feel when we’re through with this._

He has got rid of his trousers and shoes and socks now, too, and straightens up again, still turned away from me, awaiting my next instructions. I put my hands on his shoulders, applying just a very little pressure. His skin, under my hands, is cold, but he doesn’t flinch at the touch. He takes his cue without the need for words, and gets down on his knees.

We’re both tall men, though I top him by a couple of inches; and he would be just, _just_ the right height, on his knees like that, if he were facing me. But the main object of our deal is to make _him_ lose his composure, and any resulting pleasure on my part is only a secondary consideration. Not that there won’t be any pleasure - what could be more enjoyable than making someone like him come apart, after all? - but right now I’m just being selfish to even consider this option. If, as he thinks, saving John Watson is what he’s here for, and if, as I suspect, the idea of saving John Watson this way _is_ what will make him come undone as surely as nothing else in the world, I would be cruel to deny him that satisfaction.

I can already feel the sheen of moisture that has formed on the palms of my hands. Time to take them away. If I'm to be faceless and nameless, too, keeping him with his back turned to me won't be enough to make him forget who exactly I am. If this is to be all between him and that invisible third person in the room, I’d better not speak, either.

A little more pressure in a slightly different direction, and again, he responds beautifully, leaning forward until he’s bracing himself on his hands and knees. I move my own hands to his hips. He's barely more than skin and bone under my fingers, after weeks and weeks in hospital, thin, fragile, almost more boy than man. I lower myself onto my knees, too, close enough for my clothed body to brush against the back of his slender thighs and that delicious double roundness above them. The temptation to cup that bit of him with both hands, and then part it gently to expose the treasure that’s hidden in between, takes hold of me with unexpected vehemence, and I do it.

I’m not sure how he expected me to start, but the small flinch that he gives when the tip of my tongue touches his skin speaks volumes. I can tell that he was braced, at this moment, for anything from a sudden reckless onslaught to disquieting, ominous inactivity; anything that might truly test his resolve. But he wasn’t braced for tenderness, and he takes a moment to get used to - not the feeling itself, but its inexplicability. I've managed to confuse him, and there it is already, at barely four minutes in: the first breach in his defences. Store it in his file: Tenderness is confusing.

The properties of the human tongue are amazing, when you think about it – it's the strongest muscle in the entire body, and one of its most sensitive surfaces at the same time, capable of giving and receiving pleasure with equal intensity, and of the most complex motions. I take my guest through the whole range of them, from feathery light flutters to generous, sweeping circles, until I can feel that his focus is slipping away from the sensation as such, and he's beginning to stop the gap and repair the damage. Much as I regret it, I will have to change tack soon, and give him something new to respond to.

I’m not exactly disappointed - how could anyone be disappointed at the sensation of putting the strongest muscle in the body to one of its most delightful uses? - but I'm certainly impressed at the way how he practically _doesn’t_ react at all to that sudden, insistent pressure with which I make my tongue demand entry now. He does nothing to keep me out, but he does nothing to let me in either. He merely shifts his weight a little, as if he means to ease the strain on his arms, but couldn’t care less otherwise. He’s still counting, too. Interesting. How far will he manage to take this?

There is no reason to delay the first true acid test any longer. I lean back and let go of him for a moment. He doesn't turn to look, but he visibly perks up his ears as I put my hand in the pocket of my jacket, take out the small bottle and flick open the lid. This isn’t the forbidden sort of material prop, it’s a necessity, and he isn’t crazy enough to argue about it.

His reaction to my thickly covered, glistening finger is the same as to the more persistent probing of my tongue. He opens up around me, as obediently as one could wish, and lets me inside as a matter of course, a shrug of indifference made flesh. I can detect no habituation, but he isn’t entirely new to it, either. There is certainly no need for a steadying hand on the small of his back, no need to lean over him and whisper reassurances into his ear, as I often do with my other guests at this point when I feel them tremble both with the strain and the embarrassment. There is nothing better than the way they all tighten up around me even more when I tell them how well they’re doing, how good they are, how they were absolutely made for this. But nothing of that sort will get me anywhere with him, at this point.

It’s not a question of depth, either, nor of circumference, because he takes finger number two with as little hesitation but just as little enthusiasm as finger number one, raising his hips a little in a mere technical adjustment. I resist the urge to put my other hand between his legs and confirm with a touch what I already know: that I’ve made no progress at all in the past two minutes, and that I need to come up very quickly with a new strategy.

This is remarkable. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such a degree of detachment, except in victims of severe early abuse, or of course in professionals; but the most meticulous research has failed to unearth any evidence of either in his case. How does he do it? If I was right in my assumption, by now the sacrifice should have begun to feel great enough to warrant at least a mild degree of arousal.

“Move,” I tell him. He does it, of course, because he has to, pushing back against me, slowly and steadily, taking me in even deeper and loosening himself up conscientiously. But he’s still breathing as calmly as before, and his skin is still pale and cool all over.

I raise my free hand to the thin white scars on his back, those lines that I took for signposts but that are quickly becoming an unbreakable code. _Tell me, how does it work for you then? If this isn’t what makes you tick, what is it?_

I let my fingers ask the questions, running them along that tracery of interwoven pain and love, and that is the moment when all of a sudden, without warning, the second breach in his defences appears. He winces, quite strongly, to get away from that touch. There’s not much he can do against it, of course, impaled on my fingers as he is, and bound to follow my orders for another seven minutes. And he has himself firmly under control again only a second or two later. But there is no taking back the piece of information he’s just been careless enough to give me.

I was wrong, then. He didn't like it after all when it happened, and he doesn't like to be reminded of it now. He had enough of a martyr in him to want a taste of the particular sort of satisfaction that comes with the defiance of pain and death for a higher cause, but when he got it, it didn't work. It was a delusion, and it ended in disappointment. What point is there in becoming a martyr, after all, if your God doesn’t appreciate your sacrifice? But then, beliefs like that are not easily abandoned, even if your God keeps rejecting your worship. Now all that I need to find out is just how deep-seated the belief still is.

He's just as good as told me that no amount of purely physical stimulation will make him budge an inch, so I’d better spend a bit of our precious time together on probing his brain instead.

“The things you do for him,” I mutter in a quiet voice, while the fingers of both my hands continue their respective quests. “The things you do for him, so willingly and so readily. Does he care, do you think? Does he even know?”

There is a hardly perceptible but very encouraging hitch in his breath at this. He forgets for a moment that he’s supposed to keep moving, too.

“He never asked, did he? Never gave you the chance to tell him, or show him. And it's too late now. Too late. He’d love the sight though, don’t you think? He’d love to run his hands across it, again and again, taking it to himself. And then he’d give you your reward, taking the whole of you to himself, just like you’ve always wanted him to do.”

If I still needed any confirmation, it’s there now, plainly to be seen and heard by anyone who knows what to look for. It’s in his breathing rate that has sped up, it’s in the slight flush of colour on his skin, it’s in the way he’s struggling more and more now to keep himself relaxed and loose and generally indifferent to my touch as he keeps rocking back onto me. _Oh, I’ve got you now. You’ve faltered; now let me watch you fall._

“You've always been ready for him, haven't you? Just like you are now, so much that it almost hurts. It does hurt, doesn't it? That he never wanted you. That he will never hear of this, either. That he will never even bother to ask just where you were tonight, and what you were doing, and why.”

A little noise escapes him, half anger, half regret. I let my left hand travel all the way up to the nape of his neck, all smooth skin and tense muscles, and into his hair, twisting it gently around my fingers.

“Ssshh. It's alright. You're good, you're so very good. I'll tell him, if you like. It’s such a shame, such a waste. I'll tell him how much you want this, and how exactly you like it best. Because this is how you like it best, isn't it? Just like this, open and ready, giving pleasure the sole purpose of your existence.”

He's squirming around my fingers now, hating it but unable to stop himself, hating _me_ with an intensity that I can feel radiating off him like a heatwave. He gives himself over to that hatred, in the first truly genuine, unfiltered reaction that I've got from him since he entered this room, if not ever, and it's about as enticing as I can bear. Because giving himself over is what he’s here for, after all, and any further delay in accepting that gift would be highly inconsiderate of me.

In a single moment, I’ve withdrawn my right hand, unzipped myself, and coated myself generously enough to make up for the coming lack of ceremony. And then I mount and enter him.

I manage to surprise him by choosing the option of a reckless onslaught after all. This time, he was braced for more confusing tenderness, and it’s sweet how bewildered he is, to have got that wrong, too. He gasps, a wordless protest at the suddenness of the invasion, and I can feel him struggle desperately to accommodate so much of me all at once, pressing inside him relentlessly, forcing him open and filling him up with everything he can take, and more. Very quickly, the gasps become little, abrupt moans through firmly closed lips, but he can’t make those stop altogether, either.

“Just like this,” I repeat. “Just like this. This is how he’d do it, isn’t it, and this is how you want it, hard and heedless, all about him, none of it about you.”

Another thrust, and his hips buck up against mine in a movement far too erratic and too forceful to be merely directed at minimising pain and discomfort. Another one, and his lips part although his teeth do not, and I’m rewarded with a wonderful frustrated whine that tells me clearly that I’ve just discovered another secret, and the third and final breach in his invisible armour is only a matter of time.

“Not about you,” I chant, like an incantation. “Not about you. Just about him.”

Now that I’ve found both his weak spot and his sweet spot, all I have to do is keep him constantly in mind of both for the next few minutes, and that isn’t a hard task. I thread my arms under his, lock them across his chest and pull him upright, tearing another delightful little sound of protest from him as the angle becomes both more uncomfortable and more irresistible. I take a moment to admire how beautiful he is like this, with his head leaning back against my shoulder, a sheen of sweat on his face, his eyes closed, his back arched and tense as a bowstring, his legs spread impossibly wide, straddling my lap, and between them - as if it made itself particularly pretty for my inspection - the very visible proof that he’s let me in way too far, in every sense of the word.

For a fraction of a second, I feel pity for him, pity that he succumbed to the illusion that this was just a game, and pity that he could ever have thought that he might win. _No, my friend. Not against me._ _Not as long as you are just another sad little human being in need of love._

Time to put him out of his misery.

I give him a new rhythm, a still harder, faster one, and he has no choice, in this position, but to abandon his body to it. It responds perfectly, with a delicious little double twitch every time I thrust into him, and brush against his sweet spot on drawing back again. The breaths he draws become loud and shuddering.

Over his shoulder, I can see that there is another response, too, that he can do equally little about, and that is just as exquisite to look at. He's still doing his pitiful best to fight it down, but he is hopelessly straining for his own release now, and who am I to deny it to him.

“Touch yourself,” I whisper into his ear. “Touch yourself like you do when you think of him.”

He swallows hard, and the speed of his breathing increases to an almost hectic rate.

“Go on. I’m sure he’d let you do it. He’d love to see it. He’d love to watch you at it."

He whimpers, veritably whimpers, but after a second of hesitation, his hand does come up as instructed. It flinches away again at the first contact with his own burning hot skin, but that was easy to foresee. The palm of my hand slaps sharply against the back of his as they collide. I guide his hand back to grasp himself, and this time he does.

It takes no more than a minute or so of firm strokes at a still increasing pace, my fingers locked down on his, and equally firm thrusts from behind into that tight, tight heat, forward and upward, until he squeezes his eyes shut and, after exactly thirteen minutes and twenty-two seconds, gives a little sob and then admits defeat, hot and wet and unmistakable, all over our joined hands.

He stills just as it happens, as if he’s just woken from what seemed like a dream, and can’t quite believe that it is real. The next moment, I can literally feel the rage and the shame of it kick in with full force, and if there was anything still lacking to send me over the edge after him, it was this, his whole body seizing up with a sudden furious jerk that almost dislodges me. I hold him in place with one hand on his back and the other still around the sticky wetness further below, and bend him over until his forehead bumps against the carpet, and all he can do is keep still and take what I give him, wave upon wave of it, deep into his taut, soiled, desecrated, beautiful body.

“Get -“ I hear him say almost before I’m completely spent, and he shifts under me as if to push me away.

“Quiet,” I remind him, and put a slick finger against his lips to emphasise my point. He winces with disgust at the touch, but he knows as well as I do that the fifteen minutes are not over just yet. With an effort, he stops himself from turning his head away when I go on to trace the curve of his lips with the tip of my thumb, first the upper, with that admirable little knot in the middle of it, then the lower, marking him with his own scent. But I resist the urge to tell him to lick my hand clean. He is where I wanted him; to take any further advantage would be unworthy of a gentleman.

“Thank you,” I whisper instead, my own lips brushing against his ear. “I’ll have your brother now.”

And at the first stroke of the half-hour from St. Paul’s, I pull out of him, and then I exit the room to clean up elsewhere, and leave it to him to put the broken shards of his soul back together in privacy, as best he can.


End file.
